A Basic Guide To “Achieving Anything You Put Your Mind To” Process Every Struggling Painting Business Needs

A 5-Minute Guide to Achieving Anything You Put Your Mind To

– SPECIAL REPORT –

By Kevin French

cwppainting.com

It is difficult for us to keep motivated all the time. There were moments when you set out to lose weight, become healthier, start a company or otherwise achieve something you’ve always wanted to accomplish.

Chances are you started out with the highest possible intentions.

So it was all going to plan for a bit. You’ve been working out and developing strength, or you’ve been creating material for the website. And you saved your money instead of burning through cash.

Perhaps you’ve suffered a slight disappointment. Maybe you haven’t done the entire amount of work you’ve expected. You may have been sick.

You fall behind.

A relatively short time later.

And so you give up.

And maybe it just turned out to be a lot harder than you expected? You may have gotten two weeks three in, maybe you just couldn’t move forward. And, you just let your dreams slip to the side quietly.

The concern is not because you didn’t have the correct idea to begin with, the issue was that you give up as things got difficult.

. It was just too much of a miserable grind to stop eating treats/work out every day/stop spending money/wake up at 6am every day.

A lack of commitment and discipline is the issue. So, what are you going to do with this?

The response is that you need to work on developing that inspiration. You continue to develop that as a talent–and it’s something that can be mastered much like every other characteristic. Motivation and determination are not stuff from which you are born. They’re not stuff that you simply “have or don’t have.” They are items that you will build with time and through a massive deal of effort.

The Navy SEAL Way

You might feel like cutting your calories in half for 3 months is hard. But I dare you to try telling that to a Navy SEAL.

Navy SEALs know what hard is.

Navy SEALS received intensive cold-freezing instruction while they were cold 
and rained on, and became severely sleep deprived and undernourished. 
They have undergone horrific weeks of being called names, of being unlikely to be able to take 
break, and of being expected to bring large quantities of heavy weaponry with them for weeks on end.

And that’s during training. That’s before they get to the actual battle!

Skipping handful 
of carbohydrates before dinner? 
If were you, wouldn’t 
even bring it up with them!

So, if Navy SEALs are the best of the best when 
it comes to commitment and gruelling hard work, what’s their secret? 
What do we 
know from them? 
Below are few techniques 
to remember and incorporate.

Get used to discomfort

The key is to “get comfortable being uncomfortable.” The truth of the matter is that most of us live sheltered existences. We are domesticated.

Many of us think that we domesticated dogs, cats, and farm animals. We think that we domesticated these animals so that they would live closer to the lifestyle that we want.

But writer Yuval Noah Harrari has another idea. He suggests that the first animals to be domesticated were us: humans! He suggests that we were domesticated by wheat. It is in wheats best interests that we eat it, that we stop in one place for long periods in order to grow and cultivate it. By doing this, we help it to spread, while at the same time sacrificing our health and freedom.

We traded in comfort for adventure and physical fitness! And as such, we have become soft, comfy, and unused to gruelling hard work.

Thus, our baseline has shifted. Whereas once we would take a swim in a freezing cold lake, then hunt for food in loincloths, all while injured and without sleep… today we sit in front of the TV and eat packaged chocolate bars!

Central heating ensures that our homes are the perfect temperature, and meanwhile we get to enjoy being surrounded by cushions and pillows!

Now, when even the slightest thing is wrong – when we are a little bit cold, a little bit hungry, or a little bit tired – we practically cease to function! Our baseline is so spoiled and we are so unused to hard work, that we are extremely sensitive to our environments.

This is why military training of all kinds – even as far back as the Spartans – involves spending large amounts of time training outdoors in the cold, training while overtired, being yelled at, and even being fed minimal amounts of food.

This is how an army is still forced to operate. A military must be able to perform even in the most gruelling of conditions, as they won’t always have the luxury of being able to sleep in nice warm beds!

And guess what? While it might sound like harsh work, when you do then return to comfort, you’ll find you feel absolutely blissful.

It’s truly worth learning to deal with hardship, such that you can appreciate just how good you have it the rest of the time!

So how do you get to that point? I’m not suggesting that you join the SAS. But what you can do, is to introduce elements of discomfort into your regular routine.

One of the best and absolute easiest examples that you can set up, is to start taking cold showers. A cold shower is actually very good for you: studies show it can increase testosterone, strengthen your immune system, and much more.

But at the same time, a cold shower is also a fantastic test of your willpower and determination.

At first, this might still seem a little too intense or extreme. The answer in that case is to slowly build up the amount of time you train for. Start by standing under the cold water for 10 seconds, and then build up by one second every week.

Targets

That’s another tip you can use in order to build your determination and your motivation: have something to aim for. This is slightly different than a goal.

A goal might be: “I will take cold showers to improve my metabolism and help lose weight.”

But a target is: “I will stand under freezing water for an additional 1 second.”

Having this target makes it much easier to fight through the discomfort. What’s more, is that knowing that you’ve achieved something similar before, makes the target seem that much more achievable.

Mindset

Another tip is to learn to control your own mindset: to recognize your thoughts and your emotions and how these feed into your ability to achieve goals (or otherwise). You need to be able to focus not on the discomfort, but on the goal you want to accomplish. This might mean using visualization, or it might mean using a mantra like: “this will pass.”

Winston Churchil said: “when you are going through hell, keep going.”

To be able to take this kind of control over your own thoughts and emotions, there is only one tool that will fit the bill: that’s meditation.

While there are many different forms of meditation, the thing that they all have in common is that they train your ability to focus.

You’ll focus on a mantra, you’ll focus on your own thoughts (or on emptying your mind), you’ll focus on your body… it all depends on the type you learn. But either way, you are focussing – and that means controlling your thoughts and attention. It means focusing on one thing, while ignoring another.

Once you can do this, you’ll find you can rise to any challenge, and you can cope with any discomfort. Why? Because when you are in pain, you simply decide not to focus on the pain. When you are bored, you simply decide not to focus on the boredom.

By practicing taking cold showers, you give yourself the perfect opportunity to practice these kinds of techniques. You can also benefit by focussing on your breathing: using it as a way to calm yourself down and control your physiological response.

Other methods you can use to endure discomfort include:

  • Training outside in the cold and the wet
  • Fasting
  • Waking up extremely early
  • Doing something you find boring for a long period of time and staying focussed

There are many other examples. The point is to push through your comfort zone, to stay there, and to keep note of the mental strategies you are using to do so.

Another technique used by military and special forces personnel is something called “box breathing,” or fourfold breathing.

This method involves breathing in for the count of four seconds, holding your breath for four seconds, breathing out for the count of four, and then holding your breath another four seconds.

This forces you to concentrate on your breath, taking your mind off the task at hand. It also sends a signal via your vagal nerve to calm down your body, and it helps you to achieve a calm and peaceful state of mind. It’s one of the key methods used by special forces to perform their best in high pressure situations.

Segmentation

Another strategy that is used by Navy SEALS to get through their toughest training, is something called segmentation. This means that you are going to divide a task into small and digestible parts.

 Rather than focussing on trying to run a marathon, you focus on running a mile… 26 times.

This makes your goal seem much more achievable, it helps you to shift your focus onto things that are significantly less daunting, and it creates the feeling of reward and accomplishment every time you tick off one of the small steps.

Instead of trying to lose 2 stone then, focus on the smallest possible goals. That might mean doing something like one workout every other day. JUST focus on this, and over time, the “macro goal” will take care of itself.

Even the longest journey is made up of individual steps.

Stoicism and Nonreactivity

Navy SEALS also practice something called nonreactivity. This means choosing not to react to something bad that happens (or even something good). The idea is that why you can’t control everything that happens, you certainly can control your response to that thing. And this is something that Navy SEALS have in common with classical stoics.

Stoicism similarly teaches that bad things will happen. It is folly to try and live a perfectly happy life. But by accepting bad things, you rob them of their power.

Your ONLY choice is to carry on, or to give up.

When you break it down into this very simple binary, then the way becomes clear.

In Breaking BUD/S: How Regular Guys Can Become Navy SEALs, author D.H. Xavier writes:

“They were kicking me while I was way, way down. My belief could have been that they truly didn’t want me there; the consequence of that belief would have been me quitting. Instead, my belief was that I didn’t care what they said. I believed I was capable of succeeding…

Learning to think about your own thinking and how it affects your behavior is called “metacognition.”

Something Bigger Than Yourself

Finally, keep in mind that Navy SEALs are driven because they believe what they are doing is extremely important – and they believe that others are counting on them (because they are). If they fail, they let their squad down, and they potentially cost lives.

While you might not find yourself in that situation, this does demonstrate the importance of having a cause bigger than yourself.

And this is why it is SO important to make sure that you have a goal you are passionate about. Make sure you are working toward something big and important – something that brings meaning to your life and that helps give you direction.

When you find what that is, you’ll find you have an infinite well of courage and motivation to dip into whenever you need it!

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